Wednesday 19 April 2023

A city of genius – Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert – Vienna despises talent whilst alive and honours it after death.

Romanticism. Beethoven leads the way.Schubert follows.Authority unsettled by the rise in private

performance and respect for the individual.

An autocratic imperial power must face the rise in popular opinion and culture.

A decade or so after the French revolution – authority feels threatened.

Emperor rules Austro-Hungarian Empire and sits at the top of a plutocratic power pyramid.

Taste is generally conservative and non-innovative.

All things new or “foreign” are discouraged.City lapses into comfortable mediocrity…

The music of social gatherings.Intimacy is allowed in strictly regulated

conditions.The soundtrack is that of the Strauss family,

seen today as embodying Viennese culture as the 19th century develops.

Vienna is bloated, living in the past and decaying.

Young artists are inspired by what they see and by the rise of Freudian analysis to challenge the authority of the state-run art schools and galleries.

They found a new movement in Café Sperl (Hitler’s favourite coffee house, by the way).

The Secession, or “break-away” is born.KLIMT is among the more prominent artists involved.

“We desire not art enslaved to foreigners, but at the same time without fear or hatred of the foreign”.

Meaning?

“To every age its art. To art its freedom.” (secesion motto)

In this deeply anti-Semitic city, it was possible for one authority figure to declare: “Science is what one Jew copies from another”.

The new arts movement (JUGENDSTIL) numbered many Jews amongst its members. Hostility was evident within “nice” society.

The hostility between Alt-Wien and the modernists forced a break.

Freud, Klimt, Mahler are all treated poorly. Klimt as a pornographer and Mahler, although working as director of the Staatsoper, hounded from office by the wealthy and powerful.

Women still wore fashions dictated by men: wasp waists, large busts, collar to toe coverings. Klimt and Freud began to remove the outer layers and show the sexuality that lurked beneath.

Fatalism and a fascination with death are evident in much of the poetry and music of the time.

Kidertotenlieder – Mahler sets songs that would presage the deaths of his own children.

A building was designed by Otto Wagner to hold the Secession exhibitions:

At odds with the Baroque buildings around it, this was an immediate statement of intent.

!4th exhibition was the most famous. Devoted to Beethoven it featured the Beethoven Frieze of Klimt…

The movement begins to fragment and the artists begin to go their separate ways.

Music takes over…

A new language for a new time.Fibonacci based Western music is altered to

achieve a new language.12 note strings…

I’ll explain briefly.

Schoenberg, Webern, Berg.Hated by society, helped by Mahler.

Art survives and is enriched by the debate… Is this true of all areas of knowledge? Why?

Busy girl, Alma:Zemlinksy (composer)KlimtGropius (architect and artist)KokoschkaWerfelAll in addition to Gustav Mahler, probably the

greatest musician of his day.

Leading figure of Secession

SensualVisionaryForced to withdraw

certain paintings which caused too great an offence: University pictures

Director StaatoperRenowned composerFatalistic outlook on life.JewishTook music to the edge of the new ideas.Supported Schoenberg and others.Died 1911 after “exile” in New York.

Had affair with Alma after Mahler’s death (unlike Gropius who didn’t wait).

“Consciousness is the source of all things and ideas, it is a sea with visions as its only horizons.

Consciousness is a tomb for all things, where they cease to be, the hereafter in which they perish.”

?

Composer supported by Alma.Wrote in 12 note style.Violin concerto dedicated to dead child of

Alma and Gropius.Works embody the fatalistic death obsession

of Viennese art at this time:

WozzeckMisfit poverty

stricken soldier abused by authority figures

Wife unfaithful –seeking glamour

Murders herCommits suicide

LuluProstitute has a

variety of clientsExpounds theory of

life and deathMeets Jack the

Ripper.…

The city of Schmaltz and whipped cream.Strauss waltzes and carriage rides around the

Ring for the wealthy.In reality a hotbed of innovation and the

centre of artistic change for the twentieth century.

Bigoted, deceitful, charming, beautiful, imaginative, inspirational…